REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Crime beat: Gov’t’s the Real Perp in Neely Case
“Now that Daniel Penny has been acquitted,” perhaps “New York City and State officials can be put on trial,” muses Heather Mac Donald at City Journal.
“If one follows the prosecution’s logic” — that “Penny recklessly disregarded the risk of death” — then New York’s government must also face the music.
“If Penny was reckless regarding the risk that his restraint of [Jordan] Neely would allegedly cause Neely’s death,” the city and state have “been worse than reckless in their disregard for citizen safety” against a “mentally ill drug addict” threatening to kill commuters.
“The Penny jury rebelled” against this delinquency of government. Now, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg should face a recall” because “future potential Pennys are now on notice that they risk a homicide indictment if they guard their fellows from harm.”
From the right: Ivy League’s Notorious Grads
“Since 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, “the media has begun to piece together some answers,” observes Daniel Kalder at UnHerd. Mangione, the “scion of a wealthy family and an Ivy League graduate,” doesn’t fit any “profile.”
He’s been compared “with fellow Ivy Leaguer Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber.”
But “Kaczynski is hardly the only example of a highly educated person willing to inflict violence on a society he finds corrupt.”
“Well-educated practitioners of terrorism can also be found among the radical groups of the later 20th century.”
Today, justifications of “violence are quite common among America’s credentialed elites” and radical movements are “most strongly concentrated on Ivy League campuses.”
Foreign desk: Biden’s Twisted Tale on Syria
“Biden attributes the woes that have befallen” the Axis of Resistance — Iran and its allies, including now-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — to his own wise policy, notes Eli Lake at The Free Press.
“This isn’t just a deceptive telling of recent history. Biden has it backward. While it’s true that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are weaker today than they were when Biden was inaugurated as president, it’s not because Biden had the foresight to unleash the Jewish state against America’s enemies.”
Indeed, “Biden’s empty boast about Assad’s demise is a punch line. But his foreign policy was not an anomaly. He channeled the Obama-era conventional wisdom that captured a generation of Washington’s foreign policy elites.”
“It’s worth asking: What else might they be wrong about?”
Historian: Trump & Co. Should Do as FDR Did
“A Trump revolution is poised to unleash the innovative and productive power of the private sector, transforming the federal government,” much as private industry did to win World War II, cheers Arthur Herman at The Wall Street Journal.
Ever since Teddy Roosevelt, government’s “focus” has been “to restrain private energy and productivity — i.e., capitalism.”
But that’s “unsustainable.” Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy should now look to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mobilization of industry for war in 1940, and follow three rules: “Seek out the most productive,” “focus on results, not process” and “establish incentives for innovation.”
“Until government views key innovations” as “opportunities rather than threats,” a “lasting revolution in government won’t be possible.”
Conservative: Garland’s Record of Failure
“As [Merrick] Garland prepares to leave his post in disgrace, it’s worth revisiting the failures that actually make him ‘America’s worst attorney general,’ ” writes The Federalist’s Elle Purnell.
His track record includes “attempting to throw Donald Trump in prison while he was running for president,” approving the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago and “directing the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to work with local law enforcement to go after” parents who spoke out against “post-Covid school closures, mask mandates, and racial and sexual dogma in their children’s schools.”
Garland also “promoted David Weiss,” who then “ended up arranging a sweetheart plea deal designed to let [Hunter] Biden escape accountability,” which ultimately fell apart.
“Thanks to Garland, Americans are rapidly losing confidence in the DOJ and its shock troops in the FBI.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board